'Dov Alfon' (Hebrew: דב אלפון) (born Sousse 1961) [1] is a French-Israeli journalist and editor. From 2008 to 2011, he was editor in chief of Haaretz, the oldest newspaper in Hebrew and one of the most respected newspapers in the world.[2][3] Before that he was the chief editor of Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, the biggest literary publishing house in Israel.
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Dov Alfon grew up in rue Mouffetard in Paris. He published his first short story at the age of nine in the comics weekly Spirou(Magazine) while attending the College Henry IV in the fifth arrondissement.[4] On his 11th birthday his parents settled in Israel and he moved to Ashdod, completing his studies at the Rogozin Makif Guimel secondary school.[5] He later wrote about his fractured childhood in a short autobiographical piece, "The Civilization Teacher".[6]
After completion of his military service in the technological intelligence unit of the IDF, in 1983, he attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he began writing in "Pi Ha'aton", the high-profile campus journal.
Less than a year later, he was invited by Tom Segev and Nahum Barnea to join a new journalistic venture, the political weekly "Koteret Rashit".
Dov Alfon joined Ha'aretz in 1989, where he wrote a weekly column, "Kivun Harouah", about the relations between culture and money. He was appointed editor of the cultural page in 1992, turning it to the daily section "Galleria". He launched several new journalistic formats for Haaretz along the years [7] among them "Captain Internet", a weekly column supposedly written by a fictive grandfather investigating the new medium (1994), "The Marker Magazine", a business monthly (2001) and the re-designed Haaretz Weekend Magazine, where he was editor from 1992 to 1998.
Dov Alfon was chief editor of the Kinneret-Zmora_Bitan publishing house (2004–2008) and hosted "Nispah Tarbut", a weekly cultural show on Israel's Channel 2 television (2002–2007).
He was appointed editor in chief of Haaretz on May 1, 2008. He is the fifth editor in the 90 years of the newspaper's existence.
He is a regular guest in international forums about the Internet culture and new publishing.
Mixing his publishing credentials with his journalistic position, Dov Alfon launched in 2008 a special issue of Haaretz where top-authors replace for a day all the newspaper reporters. The experiment drew extensive coverage worldwide.[8]
Recipient of the Peace Through Media Award 2011 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting, London [9]
Jury chairman, Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, 2009 (awarded to Haruki Murakami)
Ophir Prize nominee for best TV Cultural show (with editor Irit Dolev), 2005, 2006, 2008
Gold Medal in the magazine category from the American Illustrators Society (1997, with Israeli artist Hanoch Piven).
Editor of the Year Award, the Israeli Press Association (1994, 1996)